Lawrence Township, Washington County

How Lawrence Township, Washington County began

Lawrence Township, the only perfectly square township in Washington County, was established in June 1815, set off from Newport Township on petition of Nathaniel Mitchell, John Mitchell, Elisha Rose, John Sharp, and others. The Dye, Hoff, and Chambers families made the earliest permanent settlements along the Little Muskingum River before 1810, with John and Samuel Dye arriving from Virginia in 1805. Petroleum, discovered underlying the township's hills, became its chief economic resource by the late nineteenth century, worked most intensively along Cow Run -- so named for the cattle once drawn to its saline springs, though the local hunter Archer's hand-to-paw fight with a bear gave the neighboring stream, Bear Run, its name. Its principal surviving landmark is the Hune Covered Bridge, a rare Long-truss span built in 1879 by local bridge builder Rollin Meredith over the Little Muskingum River northeast of Dart, and named for a prominent local family. The 2020 census recorded 824 residents.

Settled 1805 (John and Samuel Dye), incorporated June 1815, by petition of Nathaniel Mitchell, John Mitchell, Elisha Rose, John Sharp, and others, set off from Newport Township.

Where the name comes from

Not established in the sources checked; two other Ohio townships share the name (Lawrence, Stark and Tuscarawas counties, plus this one), a common pattern likely honoring naval hero Captain James Lawrence of the War of 1812, though no source specific to this township confirms it.

Before the town

No Native village, mound, trail or treaty site specific to Lawrence Township was found in the sources checked.

Timeline

1. 1805 — John Dye and Samuel Dye, brothers who emigrated from Virginia, settle in the Little Muskingum valley a short distance above the mouth of Cow Run, among the township's earliest permanent settlers along with the Hoff and Chambers families.
2. c. 1810 — A young Virginian named Dunkin opens the first school, in a log building on the Joseph Haywood farm below the mouth of Cow Run.
3. 1812 — John Dye lays out the Dye cemetery on his farm at the death of his oldest son, Enoch; more than fifty family members are later buried there.
4. 1815-06 — On petition of Nathaniel Mitchell, John Mitchell, Elisha Rose, John Sharp and others, the commissioners set off Lawrence Township from Newport Township; the first election is held at the house of John Mitchell, with Samuel Dye and John Mitchell chosen justices of the peace.
5. 1816-04-01 — At the township's second election eighteen votes are cast.
6. 1823 — John Dye dies during a countywide epidemic.
7. 1827 — Section 32 of the second township is reannexed to Newport; the township is reduced to its present limits in June 1840.
8. 1833 — Mr. and Mrs. McElHinney organize an itinerant Sunday school, the first known in the Little Muskingum valley, held in neighbors' houses.
9. 1838 — The public school system takes effect and the township is divided into eight districts, each with a log school house.
10. 1840 — The Lawrence Baptist church is constituted and builds a log meeting-house; it has no regular preacher until 1844.
11. 1842-02 — J. M. McElHinney, Evan Nomans and William Powell organize the Little Muskingum Lyceum, the first literary society in the valley.
12. 1846 — The old log church on the Little Muskingum is abandoned and the Little Muskingum Congregational church builds anew on Morse Run.
13. 1847-09-03 — Scottish settlers in the north of the township organize a Presbyterian church under the Presbytery of Steubenville.
14. 1858-04-01 — Catharine A. Fay opens the first Children's Home in Ohio at the mouth of Morse Run, with eight boys and one girl.
15. 1860 — William Guyton, who had burned gas from a fissure on Cow Run to light his shop for twenty years, sees the first oil well sunk there by John Newton and Mophet Dye, striking oil at 140 feet.
16. 1864 — George McFarlan introduces drilling machinery and strikes the second sand, setting off heavy speculation at Cow Run.
17. 1866 — Perkins and Hervey strike the first flowing second-sand well at 594 feet; oil spouts seventy-five feet high and the well burns the next night.
18. 1869-10-22 — The School-house Company, drilling on the Cow Run school lot under a lease giving it two-thirds of the oil, brings in the township's best well, at first 120 barrels a day; it eventually yields about $40,000 for the school fund. A Cow Run post office is granted in December.
19. 1870 — Cow Run is a camp of about 1,500 people with some 450 barrels a day produced from perhaps 500 wells; a Good Templars lodge is formed in December and keeps the camp sober.
20. 1873 — During the oil excitement at Cow Run, a can of nitroglycerine mistaken for refined coal oil explodes in the cabin of Alexander Dye, killing his young son and wounding every other member of the family except the baby.
21. 1879 — Rollin Meredith builds the Hune Covered Bridge over the Little Muskingum River northeast of Dart, naming it for the locally prominent Hune family.
22. 1880 — The census counts 2,336 residents, down from the Cow Run boom population of about 2,850 in 1870.
23. 1976 — The Hune Covered Bridge is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Stories

How Cow Run and Bear Run got their names

Two of Lawrence Township's streams carry names rooted in ordinary pioneer encounters with the land. Cow Run, which rises in the township's southeast and flows into the Little Muskingum, ran through a valley lined with saline springs that drew cattle from miles around before the land was fenced -- the creek where farmwives went to find their milk cows, and so it became, unglamorously but permanently, Cow Run. Bear Run, which rises in the same highlands and flows northwesterly, owes its name to a more dramatic origin: a hunter named Archer is said to have met a bear there in a hand-to-paw fight that he won, though not without his thigh being 'horribly minced' and his life nearly lost. The 1881 county history notes a second, more commonly accepted version -- that the stream was simply named for a bear killed there in more recent times -- honestly preserving both accounts rather than picking one.

A lamp that was not what it seemed

During the oil excitement of 1873 at Cow Run, Alexander Dye's young son found a can of fluid the family took to be refined coal oil and filled the household lamp with it. The lamp -- actually more than half full of crude nitroglycerine -- flickered oddly through the evening without raising alarm, until its flickering grew frequent enough that Mrs. Dye asked her husband to blow it out. As he hurried to obey, picking the lamp up just as he moved to pitch it from the cabin, it exploded, filling the air with fragments of its young victim's body, leveling the cabin, and wounding every remaining member of the family except the baby. The tragedy is recorded in the 1881 county history as a stark illustration of how casually dangerous the region's oil boom could be for families living at its edge.

A Long-truss survivor on the Little Muskingum

In 1879, local bridge builder Rollin Meredith raised a Long-truss span across the Little Muskingum River northeast of the hamlet of Dart, naming it for the Hune family whose land it connected. The Long truss, a design of interlocking wooden diagonal braces patented decades earlier, had already grown rare by the time it was used here, and few examples survive anywhere in Ohio today. Roofed in metal, sided in vertical boards, and resting on stone abutments, the Hune Covered Bridge earned its 1976 National Register listing on the strength of that rarity -- a piece of nineteenth-century engineering craft still standing in the township whose oil-boom history it postdates by only a few years.

The first Children's Home in Ohio

The first Children's Home in the state, in the county history's words, was opened on April 1, 1858, by Miss Catharine A. Fay at the mouth of Morse Run in Lawrence Township, in a temporary one-story building with eight boys and one girl. On May 1 she led the school-age children to the public school-house, and the teacher sent them home. Miss Fay took legal steps to have her wards admitted, armed with letters of guardianship, and when she brought them a second time she faced two school directors and eleven men who meant to keep out the 'pauper children.' They had no legal way to do so, but the conflict left deep prejudice in the township against Miss Fay and her institution, and the county historian noted that she received less support from her neighbours than her benevolence deserved. The tension eased the second year, when a private school was set up for the home.

Oil at Cow Run

For twenty years William Guyton had lit his shop with gas escaping from a fissure on Cow Run, and no one had thought it meant oil until John Newton and Mophet Dye sank a shaft in 1860 and struck it at 140 feet. The well flowed twenty barrels a day by itself. In 1864 George McFarlan brought drilling machinery from Virginia and reached the second sand, and neighbours carried him on their shoulders. In 1866 Perkins and Hervey drilled to 594 feet and the oil shot seventy-five feet into the air; the well caught fire that night in one of the most threatening conflagrations ever seen in the region. By 1870 about five hundred wells worked the hills, plank houses dotted the slopes, and Cow Run was a camp of 1,500 people, yet a Good Templars lodge kept it sober. The School-house Company's well on the school lot added about $40,000 to the township school fund. Production fell off steeply after 1872, to about 65 barrels a day from sixty wells by 1881.

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org

Every historic place in Washington County on the full map

Mostly private wells The water here

• Marietta City66% of residentsOhio/Muskingum River valley sand-and-gravel aquifer (own wells)
• Putnam Community Water Association17% of residentsGroundwater wells (2 wells)
• Reno Water and Sewer 111% of residentsOhio/Muskingum River valley sand-and-gravel aquifer (own wells)
• Highland Ridge W and S Association Inc3% of residentsMuskingum River valley aquifer (Oak Grove wellfield)
• Warren Comm W and S Assn 21% of residentsMuskingum River valley aquifer (Oak Grove wellfield)
• Reno Water and Sewer 21% of residentsOhio/Muskingum River valley sand-and-gravel aquifer (own wells)
• Reno Water and Sewer - Kardex1% of residentsOhio/Muskingum River valley sand-and-gravel aquifer (own wells)

Fire and EMS stations (1)

Bridges rated poor (2)

Shale and injection wells (1)

Spills reported since 2021 (1)

Elections for office

Winners in bold. Results from the county board of elections' official canvass unless marked.

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Financial Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2026-03-24

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